INTRODUCTION

@TPE_101 appropriates the title of the city's iconic landmark (Taipei 101) as an arbitrary numerical value which, when translated into a quantity of photos, hopes to provide a gestalt view of Taiwan's capital. The project identifies and documents public spaces through photography as critical visual markers of place(1) as well as cultural identity(2). The images produced are authored, however curation of those images looks to social media as an evaluative means via ‘likes’, comments and shares. The project seeks to consolidate local and tourist perspectives of place in order to gain an accurate understanding of place.

PRODUCTION

Photography by its nature is a documentary medium and, similarly, social media’s programming makes it inherently curatorial as it automatically promotes that which is 'liked', commented on, shared and viewed, thereby propagating that socio-curated content. Within the project, walking is used as tool for occupying space and activating ownership while the act of being a tourist is reformatted into a critical entity for examining space. The tourist has an outsider perspective of place with all of the faults and ignorance that come with it but also are gifted with a distance from culture, language, and identity which provides them with an unbiased way of seeing distinctions which are not apparent to locals. In the book Contemporary Philosophy of Social Science: A Multicultural Approach, Brian Fay, the author “Knowing an experience requires more than simply having it; knowing implies being able to identify, describe, and explain”(3). Therefore, the tourist as an impartial observer is granted the ability to grasp the see the place for what it is, appreciating its complexity in ways that the insider cannot. The intimate and natural understanding that locals have of the people, culture, values which culminate in what a defines a place, is also of crucial importance when looking to identify place identity. Within the project, local as well as outsider perspectives are brought together as the outsider’s eye is used to view place while the insider’s knowledge of that place is used to help define it. Both perspectives of place merge through a single lens of social co-curation. The commons acts as a sieve, keeping some content while allowing the rest to be lost in the ether.

EVALUATION

TIMELINE

Each of the twelve districts of Taipei is allotted a proportion of the total number of photos based on area. ‘likes’ and ‘Shares’ are used in the project as a system of social-media co-curation and voting whereby each 'like’ gives a photo 1.0 points of value and each comment gives a photo 5.0 points of value. At the end of the online voting period (2018/01/01-2018/04/01), the votes for each photo will be tallied.

The allotted number of photos from each district that have received the most points will be included in the final outcome(s) of the project. For example, if there are 100 photos taken in ShiLin / 士林區 district, the largest district in Taipei, then the 23 which have been ‘Liked’ and commented on the most will remain in the project as that district is 62.3682km² of Taipei's total area of 271.80km² which mean that it makes up 23.1758% of the city. Similarly, the other 11 districts are allotted a number of co-curated photos based on how much area they occupy in the whole of Taipei.

OUTCOME

@TPE_101 is an experiment in social-media co-curation and anonymous, peer-reviewed production. It plays with what it means to be a tourist as well as what it means to be a local. Place-based identity is shaped and defined through the project while its ownership is reexamined. The project does not seek to explore the aesthetically pleasing or displeasing qualities of the city but rather, through the accumulation of visual material, attempts to identify its site specific qualities. Photographs are used to document the appearance of Taipei while their curation is able to articulate its identity.

The final goal of @TPE_101 is to be published as a limited-run photo book.